#like im sitting here comparing yogurts and trying to figure out which one is the healthiest for me and i almost started crying

[itsjustinknow]

conversations on dieting for health issues when you feel like you’re being a “bad activist”

I’m most likely going to get shit for this, but this is genuinely something I want to talk about. If you are not comfortable with discussions of weight, diets, or chronic illnesses (specifically seizure disorders) and medical neglect, then please feel free to skip over this. 

I’ll put it under the cut for convenience, but just a quick summary:

tldr: I have an unknown seizure disorder in which my only treatments are my mood medication, which also acts as anti-seizure meds, and the keto diet, which I did in the beginning of 2019 at the suggestion of a chiropractor who could not otherwise help me. It did reduce my seizures for awhile, then I more or less stopped when I started college in August of 2019, and now in 2020 things have gotten much worse (likely due to stress). I’m considering going back to it for the foreseeable future but I feel awful about it because diets like this feel inherently tied to more privileged culture and I feel like focusing on my weight or diet makes me a bad person as I’ve read a lot about fatphobia in the medical field (and have experienced it to an extent). I don’t want to focus on my weight but losing some weight the first time around did help my joint pain at the time. However I do not want to feel like I am promoting this especially to people who suffer from eating disorders or simply cannot do such a thing. I am only doing this for my own health, but it feels like I should suffer instead of participating in an incredibly unhealthy (mentally speaking) culture and potentially contributing to the stigmas surrounding food and weight. I don’t really know what to do.

Extended under the cut

So I have an unknown seizure disorder. Or at least that’s how I phrase it to people, because I can’t say I’m undiagnosed, because then no one will believe me. Just like doctors don’t usually believe me.

I started having seizures in 2018. In 2017 I basically lost the ability to walk longer distances without assistance or without chronic pain. I can walk around my own house or smaller rooms, but that’s about it really. I also lost some other things, but I’ve talked about that fairly often here, so I’ll focus on the seizures. I started having what I think were cluster seizures in September of 2018, and they kept getting worse. I went to the ER after my mom took me to our general physician (after three days of having seizures, which was pretty fucking awful and I barely remember any of it). The doctor couldn’t find anything immediately wrong with me, so he called it a panic attack, gave my father some pamphlets on anxious teenagers, basically stated that I was lying about the rest of my symptoms for attention, gave me a sedative and sent me home.

I cried a lot that day, and I feel like crying every time I talk about it, so I’ll move on.

I went to a new neurologist after that, who did a sleep-deprived EEG, except that didn’t show anything major either, so he also wrote it off as anxiety or conversion disorder, which is basically the modern version of female hysteria (or at least it’s used the same way that was). So I was out of fucking luck. I then tried a chiropractor that a nurse at the ER told me about, because she saw me sobbing, apologized, and told me “he’ll believe you.” So I tried. And he did believe me. But he couldn’t help me either. This was in February of 2019.

They did give me vitamins that are good for inflammation, which I still take to this day because they do help. Apparently I have inflammation? I have no idea anymore honestly. But the second thing he told me to do was to try the keto diet because there was extensive research on how it can treat epilepsy. 

I tried it. It actually worked. But I tried to be as quiet about it as possible, because I didn’t want people to know that I was on one of those weird white people diets where they went to whole foods and preached that they were better than everyone else for eating a certain way. I thought that by switching up my diet I was contributing to the stigmas surrounding food and weight, and that by even trying to lose weight, I was awful and disgusting and this is why fatphobia exists. I was also doing it at the same time that my younger sister was getting to the point of trying to starve herself. That did not help my mental state or hers in the slightest.

I did it for two-ish or three months, then slowly started getting off of it, then did a more modified version of it where I just tried to eat less carbs in general. I did this for most of my first year of college up until the pandemic started. That’s really when shit hit the fan. 

I’m pretty sure my seizures are mostly being caused by stress and anxiety rather than just weight and diet related factors. I am definitely not putting all of it to my weight. But I do have to consider that, sadly. And right now, what seems to be the best choice of action is to try to go back to that diet (or a modified version of it) for the foreseeable future, meaning long-term.

Except I feel like absolute shit for it for the same reasons I outlined above, and because I feel like “changing your diet” is the standard advice given to anyone with chronic illness, and I don’t want to be a part of that. I don’t want to contribute in any way to the awful 

But it did actually help me i think, and god, I don’t have any other meds or help. I have zero support when it comes to medical attention besides my psychiatrist, who basically shoved me to the new psychs he’s training and I can’t get out of that. We’re in a fucking pandemic, I can’t try going to a new doctor right now. I literally don’t have many other options besides this. But I hate myself for it regardless.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, or if anyone really gives a shit to read this? It helped to get it all out. If you did though, thank you. And please be kind to yourselves. 

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